Description: This book explores the burgeoning interest in human cooperation among anthropologists, political scientists, economists, evolutionary psychologists, and biologists. Though typically neglected, cooperation is a crucial part of the triangle of allocation, formed with competition and obedience.
Review Quotes: Shall we base our notions of humanity on the limited cultural constructs and religious ideology of one time period, one political-economic system, one system of thought represented by economics? Or shall we free ourselves of these mental and ideological shackles to explore the realities beyond these assumptions? The empirical studies of ethnographic, archaeological, and even the evolutionary fossil record show why we should transcend the imprisonment of the mind that assumes that market-like relations define humanity and even all of nature. This book provides an impressive range of studies across the spectrum of anthropology that illustrate the centrality of cooperation in human relations. The various papers address ways to understand cooperation among individuals, how both hierarchic and more egalitarian organizations solve the problems of their members, the performance of cooperative institutions in difficult economic times, and the regulation of access to common property resources. The strength of the work is its focus on fine-grained empirical work rather than ideologically based assumptions. With its feet on the ground, this book does much to move economic thought toward reality.